Best VMware 5.0 SATA 6.0 RAID Controller for Price & Performance?

[tempie]

All-

I'm in the process of building a new VMware vSphere 5.0 box with the following barebones server ASUS TS500-E6/PS4.

My dilemma is stretching the best performance out of RAID10 array consisting of 4 1TB WD Black WD1002FAEX 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s Drives. I made the mistake of not reading up on my RAID cards and ended up with a LSI SAS 2008 card with barely 50MB/s of read/write (with no BBU and write cache enabled). It sucks and I wont stand for it.

Considering this is a whitebox VMware host looking at VMware's HCL the following LSI cards are supported in 5.0U1; the 9240, 9260, 9261, 9264 and 9280.
Looking over the lists it seems like the LSI 9260 chipset fits the bill from a performance/price perspective with the IBM ServeRAID M5015 reigning supreme at $300-$400 price point with a integrated BBU.

Does anyone else have an opinion on what card is the best choice in the sub-$400-$500 range?

Regards
tempie

 

[Patrick]

RAID 10 from that array should be in the 120MB/s to 250MB/s range on the LSI SAS 2008 with sequential transfers. Since you don't do parity calculations, onboard memory is less important.

Might be worth figuring out why the current setup is underperforming. Hardware wise that controller is plenty. Unless you go RAID 5/6 and/ or want protected write cache.

 

[tempie]

Patrick-

That may be true; however over in VMware's forums you will come across numerous threads regarding the limitations of a non-BBU card within VMware (including threads stating performance in other OS'es is 10 fold better, as you mention):
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1661496

Considering this is most likely a VMware specific limitation I'm aiming to get the best card in the sub-$400 price range for performance with a BBU. I just ordered the M5015 which I will cross-flash to a standard 9260. Once I have the results I will definitely be posting them here to at least help others who may be trying to build a nice VMware whitebox.

Regards
tempie

RAID 10 from that array should be in the 120MB/s to 250MB/s range on the LSI SAS 2008 with sequential transfers. Since you don't do parity calculations, onboard memory is less important.

Might be worth figuring out why the current setup is underperforming. Hardware wise that controller is plenty. Unless you go RAID 5/6 and/ or want protected write cache.

 

[Patrick]

That would be great. Especially if you have the comparison between the SAS 2008 and M5015.

Come to think of it, normally for storage disks I use VT-d to pass through the controller so that is quite a bit different than what you are doing.

 

[mobilenvidia]

RAID6 and IBM M5015 = you need the advanced feature key !!
M5015 by default only does RAID5

I have done test on both the M5015 (with Adv feat key) and M1015 in various places in the forum and front page.

What ever you do don't get a M1015 with Adv feature key and run RAID 5, you will be dissapointed.

 

[tempie]

mobilenvidia-

I'm planning on using RAID 10 in a 4 drive array, so their is no need for the advanced feature keys as RAID 10 is a standard feature.

All-

Is there a preferred application/methodology for measuring disk I/O in VMware on this forum? I've seen mention of sqlio and others, however this would have to run within a VM itself. I just came across VMware's own I/O analyzers:
http://labs.vmware.com/flings/io-analyzer
http://labs.vmware.com/flings/ioblazer

Any recommendation for a good benchmark? Tomorrow my M5015 arrives and my 2008 controller is currently installed.

Regards
tempie

 

[dba]

IOMeter is quite easy to use. You can create your own workload definitions to use and re-use, which is what I do.
VMWare io-analyzer is IOMeter pre-configured in a VM.
I have not used Ioblazer, but it sounds interesting.

mobilenvidia-

I'm planning on using RAID 10 in a 4 drive array, so their is no need for the advanced feature keys as RAID 10 is a standard feature.

All-

Is there a preferred application/methodology for measuring disk I/O in VMware on this forum? I've seen mention of sqlio and others, however this would have to run within a VM itself. I just came across VMware's own I/O analyzers:
http://labs.vmware.com/flings/io-analyzer
http://labs.vmware.com/flings/ioblazer

Any recommendation for a good benchmark? Tomorrow my M5015 arrives and my 2008 controller is currently installed.

Regards
tempie

 

[Patrick]

I do want to create a library of standard IOMeter profiles for folks to use. That way we can do data collection in a distributed fashion.

 

[mobilenvidia]

I so need to get a new phone, when looklng at posts I have to scroll accross (SATA6 became RAID6 )

I hope to do some testing soon my self, got 6x HDD coming , got both SAS2008 and SAS2108 cards in machine.

But the SAS2008 in LSI9211-IR mode is better at RAID10 than a LSI9260/40 (not by much)
RAID 10 is simple RAID, the controller has to do very little other than shift data, no cache will help with this RAID.
Unless VMWare loads the cache up before writing it to the drives in bursts.
But even with no cache the controller can spit out data to spindled drives closer to 4x faster than the 50MB/s you were getting, weird.

 

[tempie]

Results with the LSI 9260i

All-

Figured I would follow-up here with some results...

So with the LSI 2008:
Max Write: 88316 KBps
Max Read: 152070 KBps

With the LSI 9260i (reflashed IBM M5015):
Max Write: 237737 KBps
Max Read: ? (Still need to test thoroughly)

So as you can see; quite a change in write speed... I would say I'm quite happy.

tempie

 

[Patrick]

Really good write speeds. Read should be close. What did you use to test?

 

[tempie]

Patrick-

I tested with the VMware IOAnalyzer... I'll give it another shot today and report back some details.

tempie

Really good write speeds. Read should be close. What did you use to test?

 

[Patrick]

Very cool. Keep us posted tempie!